How To Break Through Plateaus!

wowisforstuds1238

Hello everyone! Haven’t posted any new discussions in awhile so I thought I’d start a new thread for anyone interested. In my opinion, one of the biggest discouragements and reasons people stop exercising and staying consistent is when they encounter diet plateaus. I thought it would be very helpful for anyone new or novice in their fitness journeys to have ideas and strategies you have found successful when encountering your own personal plateaus. If possible, explain your situation at the time and what steps you took to overcome and continue past these barriers. Will be interesting to read and perhaps gain some insight as to better one another. And yes, we’re all different and what worked for you may not work for me; however it never hurts to hear motivational stories from other people to help us realize it’s a perfectly normal bodily process and doesn’t mean that when we encounter these difficult milestones we have done anything wrong per-say and throw in the towel.

wunderkindking

Real plateau as in lasting 6+ weeks? I reconfigure my goals to reflect current weight and loss rate in my MFP settings and drag the food scale out to get really precise and make sure I'm in a deficit. Then I wait a month to see what happens.

Less than 6 weeks? I do nothing and assume it'll come off when my body drops the stress from deficit induced water weight or my hormones being weird.

I take regular diet breaks though and have all the way from obese to maintaining a healthy/normal BMI.

wowisforstuds1238

For me personally, I have been dieting and trying to lose weight for a little over 4 months. I have encountered 3 at this point so far and each time has lasted progressively longer then the last. For each plateau I have experienced, I have found that taking a little time off from dieting while still maintaining light cardio and weight lifting was the “trick” to tricking my metabolism and shocking my body back helping my metabolism to burn faster once again once I started back on my diet. Last week, I took the entire week off from not only dieting, but from exercising as well and put on a little over 4 pounds in water/fat; however when starting back I have dropped down even lower and finally broke through enabling me to stay motivated and consistent.

AnnPT77

I think this would be a good time to point out, for readers not aware of it, the quite-good "refeeds and diet breaks" thread:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1

I understand that it's usually meant as a metaphor, not literal truth (I hope), but tricking our metabolism and shocking our bodies are not literal things that happen. What can happen, from eating at/near maintenance, is a certain amount of hormone reset in things such as cortisol level. Eating at maintenance essentially tells one's body that it's not in a famine, so it doesn't need to slow down non-conscious movement, needn't hang onto extra water weight as a precaution, and that sort of thing.

If anything, it's the calorie deficit/diet that "shocks the body", makes the body react as if it's in a famine condition, needs to conserve energy, and slow down some of the more optional bodily processes. A maintenance break kind of unshocks it.

wunderkindking

I should also confess that I've never hit anything I'd really consider a plateau. I certainly may have three or four weeks before the scale moves! But when it does it's usually as many pounds as I'd expect to lose in that time frame, it just drops at once. Ie: I will lose fat steadily but won't let go of the water weight for a while and then it goes whoosh and the scale drops 2-5lbs, depending on where in my journey I have been.

i've never gone multiple months without loss.

Diet breaks? Accurate logging? Neither? Dunno but an actual plateau is not a thing I have experienced.

RunsWithBees

I’m in maintenance now but back when I was losing weight and the scale didn’t move for weeks, what worked for me was going for an 8 mile hike. The scale would always go up for a few days after an 8 mile hike (from water retention) but then trend down again and I’d start losing weight again, of course I was still counting all my calories and always ate back all my exercise calories. Disclaimer: this might not be a realistic option for everyone to do and might not work for everyone though! Just my personal experience. The most important thing would be to tighten up your logging, weigh every food consumed and be honest in logging how much you are eating including snacks, cooking oils and condiments, drinks, etc. Be realistic about how many calories you earn during exercise. I found MFP calorie burn calculations run high so I don’t use those, I found an app (iRunner) that calculates my calories much more realistically and have used it for 7+ years and it’s been very accurate for me. Keep trying different strategies because through trial and error you will figure out what works best for you good luck!

ninerbuff

A plateau in weight loss is defined as 6 weeks or more of no weight movement IF (and that's a big IF) one has been 100% consistent weight diet, exercise and rest. If something changed in diet, exercise, etc. it's NOT a plateau. It's why plateau's are rare.
People STALL all the time. Since weight loss isn't linear, one could eat, exercise and rest the same exact way 2 weeks in a row and still get 2 different readings. A stall can last a week or two, but most people will do something different to break the stall. Whether it be taking a week off exercise, change in diet, adding more rest, etc.
Anything under 2 weeks shouldn't be a panic. Just continue and see what happens the 3rd week. Then you can reassess then readjust.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Lietchi

I've been on my weight loss journey for 22 months now, having lost 60+lbs. And I don't think I've had a plateau.

Was my weight loss linear? Hell no, as my weight loss graph from the past year will attest:



I've had stalls, I've even had periods where I seemed to be gaining weight.
The longest I've gone between new lows is 47 days.
Some stalls/upticks were easily explained (increased activity level, starting strength training, TOM), others were more mysterious.

What did I do? Precisely nothing: just kept on logging my food (I'm pretty precise, so no need to improve there) and sticking to my calorie goal (between a 250kcal deficit and maintenance, based on the calorie burns given by my tracker).
Things always rectified themselves in the end.

janejellyroll

wowisforstuds1238 wrote: »

For me personally, I have been dieting and trying to lose weight for a little over 4 months. I have encountered 3 at this point so far and each time has lasted progressively longer then the last. For each plateau I have experienced, I have found that taking a little time off from dieting while still maintaining light cardio and weight lifting was the “trick” to tricking my metabolism and shocking my body back helping my metabolism to burn faster once again once I started back on my diet. Last week, I took the entire week off from not only dieting, but from exercising as well and put on a little over 4 pounds in water/fat; however when starting back I have dropped down even lower and finally broke through enabling me to stay motivated and consistent.

Three plateaus (six weeks or more without weight loss) is impossible in four months. I think the issue is that you're defining "plateau" as a short period without weight loss. There are virtually always going to be shorter periods without weight loss while one is losing weight. I think the trick for these is to do the usual checks to make sure one is estimating calories in and out accurately and then just stay on plan.